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Maggie (Greta Gerwig) is a young single woman in Brooklyn who is determined to have a baby on her own through a surrogate. However, she meets John (Ethan Hawke), an attractive, older university professor, caught in an unhappy marriage, and they start a relationship. Maggie's rejuvenating enthusiasm lures John away from his wife, the domineering Danish critical theorist Georgette Norgaard (Julianne Moore).

The film moves forward three years and the couple have married and settled down with a daughter together. Everything has gone according to Maggie's plan, so why isn't she happy? And what sort of meddlesome scheme will she concoct next?

Maggie's Plan, based on an unpublished novel by Karen Rinaldi, is both an affectionate send-up of highbrow academic culture and a treatise on modern self-realization. Rebecca Miller exhibits her characteristic sensitivity to female experience, but with a playfulness given freer rein than ever before in her work.

The film was premiered at the New York Film Festival in October 2015 and received its official US premiere in May 2016.

Rebecca Miller is the author of the short story collection Personal Velocity, her feature film adaptation of which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which she also adapted for the screen, and Jacob's Folly. Her other films include Angela and The Ballad of Jack and Rose.